The Elorn runs fifty-six kilometres across the granite of western Finistère and holds the most productive Atlantic salmon population in the Rade de Brest system. It is spate water, and it must be fished as such: wait for the lift, fish the drop. Spring is the best of it — March through May, when the runs concentrate on the rising water after Breton rainfall. Tube flies of an inch and a half in coloured water, reducing to doubles and standard tied flies as the water clears. The best pools lie between Sizun and La Roche-Maurice, on classical Breton holding water: clean gravel in the tails, deeper lies against the bedrock walls of the central pools. Sea trout run with the salmon and take the same flies in daylight, which distinguishes Brittany from the Cumbrian and Welsh waters where the sea trout are strictly a night quarry. Resident brown trout are wild and managed as a patrimonial population. Check the current AAPPMA arrêté before fishing — the salmon season varies year on year and the quota is usually tight.
The Elorn rises a stone's throw from the moorland of the Monts d'Arree and runs some forty-two kilometres across north Finistere — through Sizun, Landivisiau and Landerneau — to a long estuary opening into the Rade de Brest. It is a modest Breton river of clear, cool, acidic water off the granite uplands, fed by sixteen tributaries and by the Drennec reservoir near its source, which steadies the upper flow as a tailwater below the dam. For all its reputation it rarely exceeds ten metres in width, a small river of easy pools and gentle gradient running through wooded and farmed country. It holds a stable run of Atlantic salmon — a couple of hundred fish in recent years — and beautiful trout that share the lower water. The character is intimate, slow-profiled freestone where the salmon lies are easy to read. Wading is steady on firm rock and gravel.
Wading: Steady footing on a small clear river
- Granite
- Partly confined
- Pool riffle
